11 (mostly) free social media tools to try in 2011

This PR pro tested a host of new social media tools and created a list of the ones he plans to use next year. Best part—they’re all free or offer a free version.

By Adam VincenziniNov. 30, 2010

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It’s hard to keep up with all the tools available to help maximize Twitter and other social media platforms. But, over the last few months I’ve been testing some of the new ones to get a feel for the ones that have the potential to be the most useful.

Here are the ones I’ll probably use more next year. Most of them are free to use or have adopted the “freemium” model.

If you are familiar with TweetStats.com you’ll think that this is similar, but Twoolr provides some additional metrics and insights that TweetStats doesn’t.

Twoolr will tell you how your account is being used, when you are most active, what you are tweeting about and which links you are sharing most frequently.

Best bit: The network tab tells you who you are communicating with the most and in what context i.e. @ replies, RT’s and #FF’s.

2. Mention Map – conversation visualization tool I think PR people will really like this one.

MentionMap provides a live analysis of what a particular person is talking about on Twitter and who they are talking to. When you take a look at a blogger or journalist’s MentionMap you can get a clear idea of what they have been tweeting about of late.

Best bit: Its physical output allows you to get a feel for that person at a glance as opposed to reading a bunch of bland raw data.

While most Twitter tools profiled here are free (or adopt a freemium model), this one is priced in a way that makes it an easy sell internally if you did need to obtain deeper results. You can try Hash Tracking out now but you’ll have to wait a bit until the paid options go live.

Best bit: I assume the best bit will be the reporting, especially as it can feature 100,000 tweets associated with the hashtag in question.

The amount of ways you can communicate with your contacts only gets bigger, and consequently more difficult to manage.

This tool is worth a look if you want to centrally manage all of your contacts across all the platforms they are involved in. It will import address books from Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., and arrange them on a snazzy dashboard.

Best bit: I’ve only just started using this, but the search option seems especially useful if you need to track down someone’s contact details.